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‘Formal. So are you going to tell me why we’re here? Are we going for dinner? Just you and me? Where is everyone?’
‘That’s a lot of questions,’ Frank replies, urging me to walk.
I huddle into him to escape the cold. ‘Frank, please let me know if Leo is here.’
He runs through his answer in his head as we cross a road, heading towards the South Bank but says nothing. I will take that as a no then and I feel my heart doing somersaults. He leads me through a gate into some gardens as the last of the commuters and hordes of tourists weave around us.
‘My goddaughter said something about eyes,’ I tell him.
‘Eyes?’
‘Yeah.’ But he doesn’t reply. He just keeps walking and looking up into the night sky, urging me to follow his gaze. Eyes? Oh. Eye, a lone singular eye. The London Eye. As we walk closer, it’s quiet, less busy than usual but then I see Jasper standing there, in his version of a tux – his red velvet smoking jacket. Again, I beam to see him, feeling bad that I’d avoided the both of them up to this point.
‘Gemma convinced you to come then?’ Jasper says.
I nod, swinging my head back to take in the sight of the London Eye before me. ‘We’re going on that?’ I ask them both. They both nod, excitedly. ‘We can go on that in our normal clothes I believe, there’s no dress code.’
‘You’re so dull,’ Jasper comments. ‘Leo says sorry, by the way.’
‘Sorry?’ I ask.
‘He wanted to come but he thought it would be too awkward so we got Gemma to persuade you to come down and Leo chipped in for some champagne. He said you’ve never been on this.’
‘I haven’t.’ My heart lurches when Jasper says that, and allthat hope that once inflated my chest is replaced with complete disappointment that I try desperately to hide. It makes complete sense that Leo wouldn’t want to be here. Maybe I was stupid to think he would be. I’m not sure how he feels about me leaving or whether he has mixed feelings about us trying to enter a relationship. But I try to put on a brave face and enjoy this surprise; it’ll be nice to be here with Jasper and Frank, to have an evening with them to say goodbye properly. We walk up the galleys and stairs to embark our pod. ‘Well, maybe I’ll catch up with Leo another time.’
‘Maybe,’ Frank tells me, his face all red and contorted.
‘Are you OK, Frank?’ I ask him.
‘Yeah, I’m just not very good at this,’ he tells me.
‘The heights? Have you been drinking? Or is it the cold?’
‘I mean, the… lying…’
I turn to Jasper who rolls his eyes, just as the doors of a pod open up and there stands Leo. Leo?
‘You’re not the only one who can pull a surprise out of the bag, Miss Field,’ Jasper says, and he and the attendants urge me to get on the pod as Jasper and Frank stand back waving at me. What? They’re not coming? I’ve been ambushed? I stumble into the pod, the doors closing behind me. Leo. He’s here? I sigh deeply to see him there, dressed in a traditional tux, black tie, biting his lip. He looks so incredibly nervous. But also incredibly handsome; his usually unkempt hair is styled, his soft blue eyes filled with nerves and emotion. He holds my gaze for a moment and I can hardly talk. I stand there, slightly in shock. The pod starts to move around slowly, a safety announcement filtering through the speakers, and I take in all the surroundings; a small table with two glasses and some champagne, the pod adorned with fairy lights.
‘Hi,’ I say awkwardly.
‘Hi.’ He smiles at me and I swear my heart stops for a moment.
‘I…I…How…?’ I really can’t seem to form a proper sentence, petrified of what he might say.
‘…did I get on the pod?’ Leo finishes my sentence for me.
‘Yeah.’
‘Pretty much in the same way you did. I didn’t bungee my way in here,’ he tells me, trying to lighten the mood, trying to break this tension, unravel the emotion between us.
I don’t laugh. I’m still too shocked that he’s standing there. He wears that suit well. Too well. I start to walk into the pod and up to a rail so I can take in the view. ‘That’s Big Ben,’ I tell him, nervously.
‘It is. I mean this is your city, if you wanted to give me a tour,’ he says, following until he’s standing just behind me.
‘Houses of Parliament…Charing Cross…that’s the Thames… a train.’
He laughs and I keep my gaze on the view, trying to stop the smile creeping across my face.
